PREEvision – Cross-Location Multi-User Operation

Multi-user operation in complex E/E projects.

PREEvision supports cross-location cooperation in E/E projects: The PREEvision Collaboration Platform product option provides project and development teams in vehicle and automotive engineering with common access to required data without conflicts.

At a Glance

PREEvision is designed for carrying out complex E/E projects in large organizations and can serve as a central data backbone for all E/E development. The central database ensures a homogeneous dataset, which enables organization-wide multi-user operation.

The PREEvision Collaboration Platform is an extension of PREEvision for multi-user operation and offers versatile functions and advantages for optimal teamwork.

Project and development teams have shared access to the necessary data and work in parallel without data conflicts. Expensive processes for merging datasets are eliminated. The effort required to merge datasets is minimized. At the same time import and export functions enable easy integration into the existing tool and system landscape.

Functions / Features

Lock and Commit Concept

"Lock & Commit" concept prevents data collisions.

In PREEvision, a “Lock & Commit” concept prevents data collisions and ensures conflict-free work and efficient cooperation. All operations can be executed directly on development artifacts here, regardless of whether they are hardware or software components.

The lock mechanism is implemented automatically. Changes to artifacts are easy to identify thanks to change markers.

The graphic shows how artifacts are edited in a multi-user environment: As soon as User 1 edits the artifact, the other users can view but not edit the artifact (red). When the lock (green is removed by User 1 with a "commit", the artifact is available again to all users for editing.

Version Management

Management of all development artifacts in versions.

The integrated version management of the PREEvision Collaboration Platform meets all requirements of conventional version management. It enables management of all development artifacts in versions that reflect their respective development status and are implemented using check-in and check-out mechanisms.

The versioning is not only supported for the entire product line model, for individual model levels, and their subpackages, but also in a fine-granular manner for any individual development artifact. The development artifacts can be defined as a version individually or in packages.

Development or further development of artifacts can occur within a development line or be continued as a branch in a parallel development line.

A branch opens up a new revision line within this parallel development line. A branch can be created for any version of an artifact during the check-out.

Show more

Through the version history, the artifact development remains trackable and traceable over time.

The version history documents and logs the individual development steps of an artifact as revisions and branches, which arose during the course of its development cycle.

Show more

To keep up with the large number of artifact versions that can be in use at different points in the model, a versatile search function enables artifacts to be quickly located even in historical model versions. Also, older versions can be compared with one another at any time.

Artifacts from historical model versions are specially marked in the search results and can be easily inserted by drag-and-drop into the current architecture model and be reused.

Show more

Roles and Rights Management

Rights and roles can be specified for each project.

In multi-user operation, a roles and rights management system ensures controlled access to the data. Access to E/E projects, views and perspectives, artifact classes, and even specific actions can be explicitly controlled.

How detailed rights and roles are defined can be individually specified for each project. Read/write or read-only rights can be assigned even at the level of individual components with PREEvision. The roles model can be expanded as desired. A simplified example of what the rights might look like for four different roles:

While the "Administrator" has full rights in all areas of the E/E project, PREEvision users in the "Developer team B" role cannot access the project at all.

The "Product manager" role can, in turn, edit ECUs but not see the software components (red).

Life Cycle Management

Life cycles in PREEvision enable the management of work flows that are tuned to the specific organization. A life cycle describes the sequence of statuses that an artifact can pass through during its development process.

A status in the life cycle of an artifact reflects the current development status and degree of maturity of the artifact and can influence certain properties of the artifact. This makes the development of artifacts traceable over their life cycles.

Change marking (delta sign) indicates even tiny changes on the attribute layer. The life cycle (color bar) indicates the development state of the artifact. Check-in allows development states to be codified, and development can be traced in detail using the change history and comparison functions.

Life cycle models can be configured according to individual requirements and be adapted to specific company processes. PREEvision provides a separate authorization model for the definition and management of life cycles.

Actions can be defined in order, for example, to send an e-mail automatically in the event of status changes. Status changes can, in turn, occur in an automated fashion following certain operations, such as check-in of the artifact. In general, the life cycles can either be set automatically or manually by the user.

Show more

All status changes that an artifact has passed through during the course of its development process are logged chronologically in the life cycle history of an artifact.

Show more

The current development status of an artifact can be optionally marked. The markings help you to distinguish the different statuses and to see them at a glance.

In the change management area, for example, it can be easily recognized which artifacts are scheduled for editing, are already assigned for editing, or were already edited and closed.

Show more

Change, Product and Release Management

PREEvision provides process support for creating, planning and monitoring projects and resources. The management of changes, defects and releases is seamlessly integrated and highly customizable.

The integrated change management provides functions for assuring controlled and structured implementation of change requests. It supports efficient and consistent follow-up of change requests and errors for all development artifacts.

PREEvision also supports the handling of tickets, including their linking to the technical artifacts. For the individual process steps in the change process, the change management provides various functions and aids in the form of views and editors.

Show more

The integrated product and release management provides functions for creating, planning, and monitoring projects, project activities, and resources. PREEvision provides suitable graphic and table-supported editors for all phases of product and release management.

Show more

File Management

The PREEvision Collaboration Platform not only enables versioning of data but also offers optional integrated file management. Files can also be versioned in revisions and branches.

Whole directory structures can be managed using the integrated subversion versioning mechanism (SVN). The roles and rights management of PREEvision also helps to prevent data conflicts. This applies even when an external SVN client is used.

For handling large directory structures that, for example, form the basic functionality for use cases such as test data management and Matlab model data management, so-called SVN working copies are created on the local file system. The directory structures are then connected to the SVN versioning process.

Publications

Technical Article

E/E Development for Future Vehicle Innovations

An integrated, model-based approach from architecture design to series production

The introduction of service-oriented architectures and powerful domain computers, Ethernet to on-board communication, connectivity gateways and, finally, increasing safety and security requirements represent profound and radical changes for every development organization. To master these complex development tasks successfully as a team, a development platform and E/E database, which can be implemented in different ways, are required.

Videos

Model-Based E/E Development with PREEvision

From Architecture Design to Series Production

PREEvision offers a comprehensive modeling language to describe all aspects of e/e systems. All engineers involved in the development process find tailored diagrams and editors for their work. What’s special about PREEvision? Everybody involved works in the same development environment, with the same data, in the same data model. In here, the complete e/e system is designed, managed and documented. For optimum collaboration within globally dispersed teams, PREEvision offers multiple functions.